A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.
And to Ecstasy satisfies a standard I have for good poetry, which may not be unique to me. This is that it should encourage, and sustain, re-reading. I don’t tend to come to novels with the expectation that they hold my interest so well – word by word, and line by line – that I need to re-read every one. But I want poetry to resist my initial attempts at grasping it
With poetry of cinematic quality, the poet tells the story of Rebecca Lieberman who was only fourteen with not much life experience or schooling, but she had strength of character and a skill, she knew how to read the fortune in tea leaves. A skill that helped her to survive.
It is a sad, but very special honour to be launching this beautiful Flying Islands book: Jill McKeowen’s posthumously published first collection of poetry, Sunday Morning, Here.
Michael Dransfield was a prodigy whose life was cut short. When he died at 24 he had already published three books of poetry, since then another five volumes have eventually been published. By the time UQP released his Collected Poems in 1987, Dransfield’s reputation had grown, his poetry had been discovered by a broad readership, and his Collected Poems became the best seller in the entire series.
There is something about the name a poet chooses to title their collection that will either attract or repel a reader. Most poets nowadays opt for a short and catchy title, something that doesn’t give away too much.Something that proclaims eruditon and an understanding of the zeitgeist. Not to do so is risky, if one wnats to court favour and aplomb. Mick Corrigan goes against the current grain by choosing The Love Poetry of Judas Iscariot as title for his debut.
I am sure, when Les started writing, that he didn’t really know what he would end up producing. Well now he has written it: a further contribution to the ongoing album of Sydney, a keen-eyed portrait gallery, a record of travels far and wide – and with the whole lot framed by questions we haven’t resolved yet, and almost certainly won’t, but which it’s essential to keep on asking.
As this book is dedicated to John Foulcher’s brother, Ian, nothing can be underestimated about the tinge of grief as each poem flutters in and out of a sense of religious faith and that’s faith’s challenges. The moon landing, the paintings of Crewdson, and physical love, the body is paramount as our capsule and here it is presented in its ragged faults and its skin passion.
In Ecstatic, the personal and the political are intertwined in the most profound of senses. In this book, it is the political world we must live in, love in, make love in, grow old in, die in. It is in this world that we lose hope, over and over, only for hope to painfully re-emerge and insist we fight and dream again.
Figure in the Landscape, this new collection of poems by Danny Gardner, champions these aspects of the poetic art: in the strict observances of confronted things – places, paintings, streets, birds, butcher shops, suicides, gardens, and, indeed, landscapes – re-calibrated through the uniqueness of the poet’s eye and mind; impressions turned into subtle resonances, into abstract interpretings, confident pronouncements, blunt rejoinders, melodic invocations. Each a new, distinct discovery.
Rochford Street Review 